This invention relates to a system and a method for scanning indicia such as bar coded indicia used on packaging to indentify products.
As is now well known, systems have been developed to scan such conventional bar coded indicia, commonly referred to as UPC indicia and such systems have found acceptance in the supermarket industry.
Such UPC coded packages are currently scanned by a device at the check-out stations in a supermarket and the information detected from the label is fed to a computer which then generates the price to be charged to the customer for each item.
While the UPC indicia is easily applied to packages at the factory the tolerances between the bars of the UPC indicia make it quite difficult to add the code to a package not containing the code when it arrives at the supermarket.
In view of the difficulty in adding the UPC indicia at the supermarket, a different bar coded indicia presentation which can easily be added to packages at the supermarket has been developed. Such coded indicia is known as tri-bar coded indicia and is disclosed in U.S. Pat. Application Ser. No. 421,884, filed Dec. 5, 1973, now U.S. Pat. No. 3,947,826 and assigned to the same assignee as is this application.
While schemes exist for scanning the UPC indicia they are not particularly compatible with schemes needed to accurately scan the tri-bar indicia.
Accordingly, there has developed a need for a scanning system and method for accurately scanning either the UPC or tri-bar indicia. The present invention provides such a scanning system and method. In addition, the present invention provides a new and improved mirrored polygon structure.